Written evidence submitted by Film Hub Wales

Film Hub Wales Response to the Parliamentary inquiry into British film and high-end TV

Introduction to Film Hub Wales (FHW) 

FHW celebrates cinema. We support exhibitors i.e. organisations that screen film, from film festivals, to societies and mixed arts centres. Working with over 315 Welsh exhibitors, we aim to bring the best British and international film to all audiences across Wales and the UK.  We’re part of a UK wide network of eight hubs funded by the British Film Institute (BFI) which form the Film Audience Network (FAN), with Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, appointed as the ‘Film Hub Lead Organisation’ (FHLO) in Wales. We also run a project called Made in Wales, which raises the profile of films with Welsh connections and we were proud to lead on the UK inclusive cinema strategy on behalf of BFI FAN (2017 - March 2023). 

We are submitting evidence to this inquiry as an opportunity to voice issues facing the Welsh exhibition sector, gathered from 10 years of working with a wide range of representative organisations, many of which may have important perspectives but limited capacity to respond. We also refer to archive, inclusion and geographical specificities for Wales, along with reference to distribution and marketing challenges which relate to films with Welsh connections and the representation of Wales and Welsh people on screen.

What are the issues facing the UK’s film exhibition sector?

Exhibition faces many challenges in the current climate. The landscape of cinema is changing quickly and can be unpredictable. Exhibitors are operating post Brexit, post-COVID and within a cost of living crisis. Screening attendances can range from full houses, to empty, on the same day. Many are redesigning their audience development strategies and investing into outreach staff to generate new ways of working with local communities, including free activities. This work is costly and time intensive and many venues lack staff to implement.

There is also a historical, unequal, weighting of the film chain. Exhibition is consistently overlooked in national skills audits, workforce reviews and receives smaller allocations of funding. This has a direct impact on

a)      How the value of exhibition is perceived,

b)      Progression; as career paths in exhibition remain hidden,

c)      Strategies remain under developed, which limits organisational growth,

d)      Audience engagement and box office return.

Policy

• Policy: Exhibition has historically been excluded from screen policy and exhibitors are rarely consulted when it comes to policy development. There is often only one exhibition voice at strategic meetings - placing it in the minority where views are overpowered, or the value is not understood. Exhibition needs ‘lifting up’ in the value chain and advocating for as an indispensable direct link to audiences and the economy.

New large-scale media or production schemes are regularly released without consultation or budget for exhibitors to respond. This can leave films without sufficient means to reach an audience, with increases in the number of films made but no increase in funding for exhibitors to react. A film will not be seen just because it’s good enough. Looking at the level of investment into Barbie and Oppenheimer, which resulted in 30 million of box office income on the opening weekend alone, this demonstrates the power of marketing and distribution. We can’t begin to compare this to a grass roots independent film release, which might operate on in-kind time of the producer alone, with no PR, marketing or distribution budget. 

Sales, Distribution and Marketing

• Streaming: Changes in distribution models have increasingly favored streaming. This leaves cinemas with small theatrical windows or none at all, for releases that would previously have generated their core income and enabled them to take artistic risks or offer platforms for new filmmakers,

• Telling better screen stories: With investment into marketing, we have an opportunity to tell better regional stories that inspire new talent, audiences and improve international perception of Britain, including the nations. There is no centralised space to discover stories from the Welsh screen industry for instance whereas in Ireland, Screen Ireland are working with Usheru on their Home for Film platform to promote Irish films internationally. At Telefilm Canada they host Seeitall, a service which lets users find out where they can see Canadian films online or in cinemas. These platforms enable audiences to access home grown content, generating income for smaller releases. It can inspire new talent, letting them know that there is a route to market and support existing talent, so that their productions are less likely to encounter market failure. Audiences can see themselves and their country on screen and other countries can as well, which is beneficial for the screen industry and nation as a whole. 

• Distribution in Wales: There is no united distribution strategy in Wales. Films may have multiple Welsh investors but no centralised approach to marketing Wales’ story, or maximising that investment. Unlike the distribution and exhibition fund in Scotland, we have no funds dedicated to distribution in Wales. Over £2 million of new investment was made into film production in Wales in 2022/23 but no investment into the marketing or distribution of those films. How will those films be seen and make a return on public investment?
  
  There are no distribution companies working within Wales to sell Welsh films, which means they may lack understanding of the economic and cultural context. For example, the supply of Welsh language marketing materials, which is a legal requirement for most venues in Wales.
  
  There are little to no screen funds allocated to cover film marketing and distribution campaigns in Wales. Filmmakers are not paid to market their completed product and Welsh exhibitors rely on project-based funding, meaning that they often have one member of marketing staff and no budget for film marketing. The distributor may also need to apply for a distribution award for more niche titles, to which they can apply to the BFI Audience Projects Fund but there is no fund of this nature in Wales and smaller Welsh releases struggle to meet the criteria. In some cases, it may be more financially viable for a distributor to secure a handful of sites on a small release and move to Video on Demand (VOD), meaning the film has limited visibility. There would be value in including marketing within relevant production agreements, rather than an additional application once the film has been completed.

• Global distribution: Out of a sample of 12 Welsh films in 19/20, 58% received export funding from the BFI but only 33% secured international sales, rising to 35% in 2021 across 14 releases. In territories such as Sweden, they benefit from an international department, which maximises exposure of Swedish films via festivals, markets and events. Films can also access launch funding to support distribution and they produce ‘Swedish Film’, a magazine to promote Swedish films to an international audience. Telefim Canada works with the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to promote Film Circuit, which aims to bring the best of Canadian and international cinema to audiences across Canada. Internationally, TC supports Canada Now, an initiative they run with the Canadian Government to promote Canadian films in Canadian Government priority export markets.

Skills

• Exhibition versus production: Until exhibition is able to ‘level up’, it remains less valuable to decision makers. An example of this is funding for exhibition training and support to fill skills gaps. Focus remains on production and development. In 2021 funding for exhibition though a major known skills provider was just £20,000 for the UK. In 2020 in Wales, a major skills census was undertaken for production-based roles only. Skills audits or schemes to address ‘gaps’ in the screen industry regularly address production only, meaning exhibition is excluded from data collection and staff have fewer opportunities to upskill.
• Staffing: Exhibition organisations are regularly understaffed. Within venues, staff are often covering multiple job roles. The General Manager might be greeting audiences, running marketing and handling strategy. This limits their ability to engage in training or programming activity. One of the principle benefits of FAN is the added capacity we can give to venues but we also operate with small teams. Overheads and staffing are often scrutinised at funding application stages. We need to work towards fair pay and equity with regards to all screen roles. Routes in to roles and opportunities can also still be reliant on who you know, middle class codes or gate keepers. White ableist ways of working need to be overhauled. We need to make cinema appealing to our next generation filmmakers and exhibitors.

Funding

• Geographical funding: There is still a sense of imbalance across the nations and regions due to devolved funding budgets and use of the Barnett formula principles. Venues in Wales might receive £60,000 from a UK film fund but for venues in the North of England or Midlands, £150,000 is available. A one-off project in London might receive £200,000, which is more than a collective of 30 Welsh projects receives for an entire year. Film Hub Wales operates with an annual fund of circa £100,000 to support the development of audiences for British independent and international film in Wales. The network of exhibitors is over 300, with around 70 full time cinemas or mixed arts centres, which would equate to a grant of £1400 each, if all of those cinemas applied.
  
  While there are factors to consider in these awards, this does create inequity and apathy from funding applicants. It results in lower project awards, fewer staff, lower salaries and makes it challenging to secure skilled applicants. Some organisations will also not meet threshold criteria for national funds that can offer sizeable grants and will be limited to seed funding from regional funders. Some organisations are therefore unable to level up, while others around them can.
   
• Core funding: There is currently no regular access to core funding in Wales, only project based. For organisations who are not revenue funded by the Arts Council of Wales, funding is often short term with significant administration, which stifles cultural change and sustainability. Short funding cycles UK wide result in vulnerable projects, which cannot support meaningful audience development over the long-term and can demotivate audiences and delivery teams.

• Diversity of funds: Funds outside of the BFI to develop and sustain effective audience development for independent cinema are limited. Film is often seen as a commercial art form, making it difficult to source investment. Cinemas often have to over-deliver on insufficient grants, to meet audience expectation, whilst also meeting increasing reporting requirements from funders, which leads to burn out.
• Festival Funding: In reference to Wales, festivals events emerge to meet local audience need with over 40 events known to FHW alone. The absence of a ‘national festival for Wales,’ is raised regularly in policy suggestions but without knowledge of the current festival sector, which already has a wealth of unique events developed with communities in mind. Significant resource and changes to infrastructure would be required to establish an event of that scale.

Equality and Inclusion

• Structural inequality is still present in the screen sector, whether that is in reference to staffing, governance, on screens or beyond. This requires buy in from all parties and commitment to real change. Cultural inflexibility and traditional ways of working are slow to adopt progression and many people are in roles of power for too long.
• Short term funding results in insecurity, limited solutions, tokenistic changes and inconsistent offers across capacity building, project delivery and audience experience.

• Access: Funding for access is limited and needs to be addressed as part of the core screen offer. This includes accessible formats as part of production agreements (and clear marketing of these assets to venues in good time), support for interpretation, translation and BSL – all of which are often sacrificed due to the nature of limited project funding. It’s impossible to support audiences with access needs efficiently without addressing the route of the cause. This also means that access needs to be considered as part of every agreement and action. The Swedish Film Institute for instance, offer grants to support accessible formats for around 50 films every year.
   
• Stories have been shared about the lack of safety in the sector, poor practice and working conditions. A health audit is needed, and structural change required.

Welsh Representation on Screen

• Welsh Film Stereotypes: Welsh culture is often pigeonholed on screen, with stereotypical depictions, tropes and limited use of the Welsh language. When interviewed as part of our brand research, even some Welsh industry representatives could not articulate what Welsh identity was, describing it vaguely as involving ‘language’ and ‘landscape’. Limited audience research is undertaken into the behaviours and interests of Welsh audiences,
   
• Equity for Talent: Absence of on-screen / talent diversity has exacerbated these stereotypes. Our benchmarking report indicated that out of 12 films in 2020, just one was led by an actor of colour, and none involved a Black / non-Black person of colour in a directing or writing role, which remained unchanged across 14 films in 2021 report.
   

Data

• There are regular gaps in data collection methods which mean that national and regional data is hard to break down and smaller exhibition operators are not able to use methods of centralised data collection, excluding them from the UK box office picture. In some cases, data is considered sensitive and not shared at all. In Sweden, The SFI publishes sector data annually, including both cultural and economic indicators. In Ireland, Domestic insight data is available on their website, including top performing films and market share. This data could be used to tell better stories about our screen sector and support exhibitors to develop audience strategies.

• Large amounts of public funding are often invested into data collection but with limited results. Metrics for success go beyond quantitative data and when we talk about screen stories, we need better, long-term, mechanisms to deliver. Data therefore cannot be treated as an add on to an initiative without proper resources.
• Exhibitors are affected by growing requests for data. Benchmarks should not change each year and they should be able to survey to audiences in engaging ways without tokenising.

Archive:

• The Screen and Sound Archive at the National Library for Wales offers an important service. The archive team has been deconstructed over recent years with regular restructures, redundancies and departmental merges,
• The Archive used to have an outreach events programme which they no longer have the resources to run and exhibitors may struggle to access content regularly as remaining staff have large workloads and lengthy rights clearance processes prevent open access,
• The website catalogue function requires investment so that it is easily searchable for curators and visitors,
• The Archive holds a large amount of S4C Welsh language content but often, these have not been digitised or require restoration. They may only exist on older formats such as Digi Beta where quality of the print may therefore be low. They are now generally available as an AS11 or similar but may have no English subtitles, may still have commercial breaks, or have not been top and tailed for theatrical. Cinemas may have to edit into DCP themselves which isn’t sustainable practice.
• S4C do not have a team for distribution enquiries, meaning that access can also be problematic, sometimes limited to a small number of titles annually.

Capital and Environmental

• There is a lack of capital investment available, meaning that venues struggle to fund changes in digital cinema technology. Audience expectations are for technologically developed, cross-platform approaches to cinema. Cinema are challenged to keep up and become part of this wider creative offer, distinct but also flexible enough to be integrated. Streaming services have raised the bar with experimental approaches to production and distribution, offering new writing and fresh voices. Studios, distribution and exhibition need to be able to catch up, experimenting, taking risks and trying different models, in consultation with audiences.
• Many venues in Wales have one screen, meaning that there is competition for screen space across multiple artforms and community activities.
• Lack of capital funding also affects their ability to reach net zero targets as many operate from within culturally significant buildings which require regular upkeep.